Tando Velaphi – the 20-year-old who made headlines with an amazing performance playing for Queensland Roar last season – may be the bolter for the top position.

While Velaphi made way for Tommi Tomich for the weekend’s 1-1 draw against Adelaide, he was in goal as Glory beat Newcastle 1-0 the week before. Glory also have Jason Petkovic to return from injury and Aleks Vrteski vying for the spot and Ron Smith has not given any of them assurances of the top spot.

“At the moment we’ve got four keepers. Petkovic should be back in about a month’s time so everyone’s working pretty hard to fight for that first spot. So, I guess at the moment we just keep working hard at training and in the pre-season games and whoever is performing will get it I suppose,” says Velaphi.

“Up until then I just have keep working hard at my game with Tony Franken and train and perform. At this stage, that’s all we’ve been asked to do. I’m actually trying not to think about it because once you start doing that you confuse your mind and stop doing the job at hand.

“I’ll just sort of take it every day as it comes. I’m still young and I’ve got Tommi with me and Petka to ask questions, and they can try and help me out. Aleks Verteski has played a few games as well and he’s someone my age that I can relate to with the things we’re going through.”

Incidentally, Velaphi believes Glory will be more successful in front of goal too, with the signings of Nick Rizzo and Mate Dragicevic.

“It’s [pre-season] going really, really well. We’ve got quite a different look to the team this year with a lot of new signings.

"We’ve got Foxey [Hayden Foxe] in there and Mate Dragicevic the big striker and Nick Rizzo. It’s been good to be able to finally get the whole team together. We’ll get a few more goals and hopefully push for the finals,” he said.

The AIS graduate nominates Mark Schwarzer alongside Peter Schmeichel and Iker Casillas as his favourite keepers and believes the Socceroos custodian performed well at the Asian Cup.

“Schwarz has had some quality games. Even in the Asian Cup, he made so many important saves," he said.

"As a keeper you notice them but other people might not. Some people think sometimes a keeper might not have much to do but when you analyse it, as a keeper, you see he does make quality saves.

"He’s definitely someone I look up to.”